First Week in Nova Scotia: 2018 East Coast Tour Update #4

Travel dates: June 21-29, 2018

We love Nova Scotia! I’m so in love with Atlantic Canada, in fact, that I want to start planning a trip to Newfoundland for next summer. But Dave thinks we should go west again instead. Boo. I guess there’s stuff worth seeing in other places, too.

RVing disasters: We continue to have the same bed not working disaster. When I left off in the last post, we were taking it to one more place in hopes of getting it fixed. They did have a new theory about what’s wrong with it, but it involved replacing some major components of the trailer’s electrical system, which, in turn, would involve waiting a long time for parts. So it’s officially not getting fixed until we get home.

Our plumbing got jealous that the electrical system was getting all the attention, so our toilet started leaking a few days ago. Fortunately, this time it was a straightforward problem: some quick googling told us that a broken vacuum breaker was very likely the culprit. And pretty much every trailer in the world has the same brand of toilet, so parts are easy to come by. Unfortunately, it broke the day before Canada Day, so we had to live with it for a couple of days before anywhere was open and could fix it for us. We were glad it didn’t break at the campground where there were only pit toilets. Also, we could still use it by turning all the water to the trailer off and flushing with a jug of water instead. But it’s not super convenient to do that every time someone needs to pee, so we mostly did the bathhouse during the day and then turned the water off at night so we wouldn’t have to trek there at 2 in the morning.

So we spent part of our day yesterday hanging out at the RV place. But they had free popcorn, so that was nice. And we went to a park nearby and wore the dogs out with a hike.

So we left Acadia and had a long driving day through New Brunswick to Parrsboro, Nova Scotia (sorry New Brunswick; we’ll check you out a little more on the way back!) Crossing the border was ridiculously easy and took about 30 seconds. We’d dumped fresh produce and chicken and had a folder full of paperwork, but the guy just glanced at our passports and the kids’ birth certificates, asked for our license plate number, and asked if we had any weapons or alcohol. Hope it’s as easy going back the other way. Although worst case scenario we just have to live in Canada forever, which I’m cool with. Except we need Fiesta the beagle and the cats to get here somehow….anyway, it’s probably not something we need to worry about right this second.

The drive was pretty easy; the roads are mostly good, although there is a lack of rest areas compared to the US (we found one very nice welcome center to stop at; it even had a dump station).

And then we made it to the tiny town of Parrsboro, where we were greeted by this view of the Bay of Fundy at our campsite at Glooscap Park:

We were completely charmed by Parrsboro. This is where we learned that Nova Scotians are amazingly friendly. I mean, this is what they say about Canadians, I know. But we’ve still been amazed by how frequently people stop you and want to have a whole conversation with you, ask where your from, and tell you about everything you might want to see or do within a 30 mile radius.

We went to the Fundy Geological Museum:

We hiked on Partridge Island:

And we explored the beach by the campground. Fergus loved the rock scrambling:

We did a day trip to Joggins Fossil Cliffs one day as well. This is one of three Unesco World Heritage sites in Nova Scotia. We did a two hour guided walk along the beach to look for fossils and, honestly, I wasn’t expecting that we’d find a whole lot. But there were fossils all over the place! The first time someone found something everyone was like, “umm, did he just find that fossil sitting on the ground?” But yes! That’s how it works! There are 300 million year old fossils from Coal Age trees and stuff just sitting there on the ground! Gus was especially good at finding them:

Our next stop was at an RV Park called Highbury Gardens to see Grand Pre National Historic Site and Ross Farm Museum. Sadly our one full day here was rainy and cold, but we still learned an awful lot about Acadians at Grand Pre:

And about stuff like how to make barrels at Ross Farm:

Then we moved all of 60 miles to our next stop in Annapolis Royal and had another site with a great view at Dunromin Campground:

Here we checked out Fort Anne, which turned out to be one of Abe’s favorite things on the trip so far, because there are awesome hills to roll down:

This is also where Abe starting racking up Xplorers tags, the Canadian equivalent of Junior Ranger badges in the US.

Then we went to Port Royal National Historic Site for MORE HISTORY! Port Royal is a reconstruction of one of the earliest European settlements in North America.

Annapolis Royal is another totally charming town. We also checked out the historic gardens, made another trip to Fort Anne for hill rolling, walked along the waterfront, and sampled ice cream and local beer downtown:

And on our last day at Dunromin, we made a day trip about 45 minutes south to Kejimkujik National Park, where we did a bit of hiking and a guided canoe trip:

Phew! We did a lot! And we were just getting started with Nova Scotia. Which– have I mentioned?–we love!